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by KronisLV 1282 days ago
I actually wrote about using Linux as a daily driver for a week for everything, gaming included: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/a-week-of-linux-instead-of-...

In short, Proton is making pretty good progress and anyone can check their own Steam library with ProtonDB, to see how many of the titles they care about are likely to work.

Out of the popular mainstream games, around a half will work on Linux, whereas in the case of my Steam library (mostly indie titles) that figure is closer to 75%. This is no doubt thanks to shipping games now being simple in most of the popular game engines out there (like Unity, Unreal and even Godot). However, some games have the occasional bug, whereas others just straight up refuse to launch.

Also many users don't use things like AMD Software, but I personally didn't really find a good alternative for it on Linux, to limit my GPUs power usage and alter the fan curve, CoreCtrl coming close but not quite being a viable replacement: https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl

Back to games, there will be issues with either really old niche titles that you might want to play, or many of the modern games that have multiplayer components (and anti-cheat systems), or sometimes even two games from the same publisher/developer might have one of them be available on Linux but not the other (e.g. War Thunder works but Enlisted doesn't).

In short, Linux is definitely getting better and might already be sufficient as a desktop daily driver even for the folks who want to do some gaming, but isn't a 1:1 replacement and some things just won't work for a variety of reasons. That said, claiming that "The Year of the Linux Desktop" might eventually come no longer feels delusional - it might just be 5-20 years until we get there for regular folks.

This probably wouldn't have happened without Valve's involvement, as well as all of the people who work on Wine and other software like that.

1 comments

Games developed on Windows desktops, targeted for Windows desktops, running by translating the Windows API.
Does that ultimately matter? Proton/WINE etc. create a compatibility layer for Windows on Linux, and WSL/Cygwin etc. creates a compatibility layer for Linux on Windows. If one is cheaper and offers less bullshit, the other one is threatened. It's a moat coming down.
OS/2 has proven how much it matters.

WSL is nothing new, the only thing it brings to the table is that we don't need to install VMWare or Virtual Box.

I don't dual boot since 2005.

A lot of games run on Linux natively and newer games are using Vulkan. We can't help that the feds didn't go after Microsoft for paying game devs to try to lock non-console games to Windows.
wine runs older windows games better than modern Windows

with Microsoft's declining focus on compatibility, the time is coming where the majority of Windows games now run best on something that isn't Windows

(not to mention the lack of ads, spyware, general lack of stability and forced reboots)

If you search for Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8,...., versus Linux, you will find similar arguments being made as prophecy of the great migration.
previously there wasn't an extremely profitable, market leading, privately owned gaming company with a founder that is completely and utterly determined to ditch Microsoft

and share the result of that freely with the world

By creating a platform that emulates Windows, otherwise no one would bother to target their device natively.

Those 2% market shared are filled with games that are developed on Windows, targeting Windows.

Meaning those game studios will keep giving Microsoft money, and letting Valve do the needful to work on their platform.

> By creating a platform that emulates Windows, otherwise no one would bother to target their device natively.

this is a stopgap measure to bootstrap demand for the platform

because these days the target platform isn't Windows

it's the game development kits sold as a service, like Unity and Unreal Engine

both of which are now supported natively

> Meaning those game studios will keep giving Microsoft money

now you've lost me

(it's also bizarre that you pop up in every single "Windows bad" post right on cue to defend Microsoft's honour)

(edit: ah, found your linkedin, so you're an MS employee, I guess that explains it then)